24 October, 2005

Rosa Parks died. If you didnt attend school in this country or are just plain ignorant, then you would of course know that Mrs. Parks was particularly famous for refusing to, ahem, move to the back of the bus when a white (aspiration on the "wh") gentleman demanded she "git up" (as I imagine the sourthern vernacular went). Mrs. Parks rightly told that gentleman, "Fuck you, I ain't gittin up for shit", and the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott was born.

Okay, so to be fair...many African-Americans did the same. And many of them remain nameless. Mrs. Parks had the fortune of being a secretary in the local chapter of the NAACP. When they heard of her arrest, they took her story and made it the emblem, nay, the symbol, of the civil rights movement. Mrs. Parks, to use a literary analogy, is like a synecdoche...she is a part representing the whole. Behind this one woman stands thousands who refused to give up their seats to Jim Crow. I guess those names will remain forgotten, as many do, but thank zoroaster that they did what they did. And thank you too, Mrs. Parks, for being a symbol of them all, because at least through you we can (kinda) remember them.

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A little something about me....

This is the journal of an archaeologist-in-training and PhD candidate at the University of Arizona. Currently I am living in Oaxaca preparing for the next phase of my PhD career, the dissertation research project. I have a little site up in the Mixteca Alta region that I'm hoping will tell me a lot about the transition to urbanism in this area.

Aside from that I spend my time enjoying myself in la tierra de pasión y calor. This blog is about being a graduate student and living it up in Oaxaca. All opinions are my own. Let the adventure begin.